Librarianship in Practice- Making Personal Libraries Accessible: The Example of the Robert Menzies Collection.

Bailey, Rachel

Stone, C. & Berryman, J.  (2014). Librarianship in practice- Making personal libraries accessible: the example of the Robert Menzies collection. The Australian Library Journal, 63(3),       238-246. Doi: 10.1080/00049670.2014.915499

Summary: This article addresses a relational database mapping technique librarians at the University of Melbourne used to organize Robert Menzie’s (former prime minister of Australia) personal library.  From the process, library staff learned that organizing a personal library is much more complicated than indexing and cataloguing items in a traditional library.

Evaluation: I found this article interesting. It made me think how fun and challenging it would be to manage a collection at a personal library. I like how each book or artifact in the collection can be tied back to Menzies’ interests social network or big events in his life. Online access to the collection can be found at www.menziescollection.esrc.unimelb.edu.au.